The Forgotten Tale

by J. M. Frey

  Instead, I draw Martin and Mei Fan into the living room. I drop Alis into her grandfather’s waiting arms—for here is another man in this realm who dotes—and pour each of us the closest thing I could find to a winter sherry. Pip is back down the stairs in a flurry, cackling with laughter and squawking with indignant pride as soon as she catches her grandmother with her cooking chopsticks in hand and her face over the dumpling basket.

  The next few hours leave me no room for sorrow as I facilitate the entry of each of our guests. Colleagues from the university mingle with neighbors and the parents of the children Alis and I have managed to cultivate as friends at the local park.

  In Hain, it is custom to bring some edible thing to share to Solsticetide. Where I had expected cheeses and wines, breads and haunches of meat, the people of Pip’s world come from more different cultures and culinary traditions than I can name. We are therefore met with hummus and crudités, beer and vodka, souvlaki, homemade onigiri, and a platter of olives and pickled onions. There are samosas with a sweet chili dip, and tatziki and pitas, salted watermelon, jerked chicken, and a feast of cookies, pies, and loukoumades still dripping honey. Adding Pip and Mei Fan’s traditional Chinese offerings, like mooncakes, and it is enough to make the dining room table groan and each face split with a grin of delight upon seeing it.

  I am making my second round of grazing with relish, putting a sample of each treat on my plate. I am the Lord of the Manor, after all, and so I must not refuse any of the offerings. It is tradition, I tell myself. It is polite. And I resolutely do not contemplate my waistline, or the way the lack of a sparring partner has turned me into an inconstant swordsman.

  My vanity can wait for tomorrow. Tonight, I feast.

  “You know,” says one of the neighbor’s lads as he helps himself to the spread. “This is almost like what they do in those books. The Turn books?” The boy is just beginning to sprout facial hair, and is exactly the sort to be reading my brother’s adventures and be entirely absorbed by them—be it in a tavern where Bevel happened to be recounting them, or here where they are bestselling paperbacks.

  Just before Alis’s first birthday, Pip accepted a position to teach Critical Literary Theory and Gender Studies at Victoria University, and we sold our little condo in Vancouver and traded up for a small house with three bedrooms, a bit of greenery, and framed copies of the concept art for The Tales of Kintyre Turn all around the living room. The lad now points to the artwork nearest to us in demonstration—a painting that depicts my brother engaged in battle while on horseback, two armies clashing in the distance. It was in that battle that Stormbearer, the great stallion depicted, was slain.

  “Oh?” I say to the lad, and pretend very hard that I don’t already know what he is talking about.

  “The midwinter thingy.” The lad grins, spotty and pleased to have someone to converse with. He is affecting a pose of adultness, and I can see that he very badly wants to impress upon me that he is no mere child. That he is sophisticated and can hold a conversation about books.

  Along with another round of treats, I had come into the dining room to fetch myself a glass of wine. The first desire met, I pick up a bottle and fill my glass, then offer a small pour to the lad as well, silently accepting the pact that I am to treat him as a man, not a boy.

  “Solsticetide,” I correct him softly.

  “That’s it!” he says, accepting the glass. “Have you read the books?”

  “Yes,” I lie. I have yet to pick them up off the bookshelf. But if I were to say no, then I would have no explanation as for why I am as familiar with Kintyre Turn’s adventures as I am.

  “Cool!” the lad says, and then obligingly chimes his wine glass off mine. “Uh, don’t, uh, don’t tell my Mom I’m drinking, okay?” he asks, shamefaced.

  “Should I have not poured for you?” I know there are laws in this world about who can and cannot purchase alcohol, and at what age it is suggested that children begin to drink it, but I had not thought that they were so rigidly enforced. It is custom in Hain for children to drink watered wine at dinner, the refreshment gradually becoming less and less watered the older they grow. It is a way to teach responsibility and accustom them to the effects.

  “No, it’s cool . . . she just. . . ” He shifts furtively, which explains all I need to know to make my conjecture:

  “Ah, alcoholic sibling?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Just a guess,” I say, knowing that the observations of a former spymaster are not always welcome.

  The lad shrugs.

  “Very well,” I say. “Your secret is mine.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Piper.”

  The lad finishes the wine and leaves the glass on the credenza, clearly hoping to get a refill later, so I let it remain where it is. I then go out into the living room to make toasts, facilitate introductions, and revel in the fuss. Alis is now in the hands of her great-grandmother, and wai po is speaking to her in Mandarin.

  Pip and I both hope that our child will grow up bilingual. Pip had very little interest in a second language in her youth, and regrets now that she cannot speak it fluently. I am a polyglot, of course, but Dwarvish or Goblinese is of very little use in this realm. So I pay careful attention to wai po’s lessons as well.

  Stuffed with delicacies and delight, wine and wonderful company, I feel like the very spirit of good cheer, just as a lordling celebrating with his Chipping ought.

  Right up until I open the door to Elgar Reed.

  Shoes

  The woman-shaped thing travels first to the grand and exotic Kingdom of Brystal. Located in the narrow waterways between islands in the warm Mooncall Sea, Brystal is an accumulation of the great southern archipelago. Each isle boasts its own city-state, and though it has a capital in Queensdream, it has no real rulers to bury among the Hainish, Gadotian, and Urlish kings in the Valley of Tombs. Every city-state is backed by jungle and mountains; every window faces the salty, blood-warm water; every larder is full, and every flagon overflowing. And the Brystalians reason that, with bounty like this, who needs a single king?

  In the resort town of Ariail, the woman-shaped thing folds herself down into the form of a courtier so as to be able to pass amid the crowds untouched. She was a rude farmer’s wife for so long, her lips and hands chapped from laundry and cooking and gardening, that it is a luxury to have soft, smooth skin and shining hair again. The woman-shaped thing takes smug enjoyment from the way the humans regard her with lust and covetousness as she passes them. It is her due.

  These are people who would sell their souls for a night between her legs. People who will be willing to make a Deal, and that is what the woman-shaped thing needs most.

  She makes three Deals in Ariail, manipulating each of the dumb animals as she shakes their hands, so that their desires match her own. Creatures like her cannot Speak Words, but she can barter for them, can kiss and suck and lick them out of a human mouth, if the human is willing to let her.

  Each of the three stupid mortals whimpers “Thank you, Mistress Solinde!” as she steals away their magic, twists the three new Words into spells of seeking and revelation. She casts them back into the air immediately.

  That bitch-fairy, Luck, is on her side, it seems. That for which she searches is on this very island.

  She finds the first totem in a cobbler’s shop.

  The shopkeeper is proud of his craft, despite how impractical shoes are when they’re made of anything but leather and wood. Dancing slippers crusted with silver leaf, and crushed ruby powder, and sharded glass glitter on his shelf. They are meant for the courts, for the mistresses of those who claim royal blood—an overabundance in Brystal. They are meant to be danced in only briefly, meant to glitter under chandeliers, and then sat in carriages, and at tea tables, and to whist. They are not meant for the streets, for chores. They are not meant for farmers’ wives.

  Solinde despises them.

  That night, when the cobbler and his offspring are fast asleep
in their beds above the shop, Solinde sets fire to it. She is not allowed to kill mortals, by the laws of the Deal-Maker Spirits, so she is compelled to knock on the proprietor’s door and alert him to the conflagration, though there is no rule saying how loud that warning must be. After all, it would not do for anyone with the talent or skill to remake the totem to live.

  Solinde turns away from the burning building, slipping through shadows and the reflections of flame in nearby shop windows. She pauses in an alley and looks up, to be gleeful witness to her handiwork. Far above the veil of the skies, a realm burns.

  Two

  I don’t see his face at first, shadowed as it is by his cold-weather cap and the way the porch light shines onto it. The chill breeze of the evening bites the wine-flush in my cheeks, nipping at the heat and most likely making my nose redder. I always did gain such a motley, unattractive blotching when slipping into my cups, and in this world, the wine is never watered.

  “Come in, come in!” I say, turning to open the closet door and fetch a hanger for his snow-sodden coat. “Well met, and well come.”

  He enters, doffing his cap and stuffing it into his pocket. Then he shuts the door behind him and raises his head. I turn around. His smile is gratified and hopeful, and a very great shock to see.

  The sound of the wooden hanger clattering to the tile is bright, and abrupt enough that several pairs of eyes turn from their conversation in the living room to peer at me. I don’t recall backing up the staircase, but when I blink again, I am three steps away. And Elgar Reed is standing in my foyer, dripping melting snow on the tile and holding an enormous bottle of wine tied with a ribbon dangling mulling sachets. He holds the bottle out, a clear offering. And one that he equally as clearly expects me to accept.

  Oh, the fool.

  “N-n-no,” I say, as firmly as my tripping tongue allows, though whether the denial is for him, or for me, I am not certain. All I know is that I will not stand by the door and welcome Reed into my home on Solsticetide, bad luck for turning away a guest on the Night of Light be damned. A little bad luck is well worth the price of keeping Elgar Reed away from my family.

  “Hello, my boy,” Reed says, and it is stiff sounding. Tentative. Hopeful. He is clearly under the assumption that he can bludgeon my rebuff into nothingness with the force of his cheer. His cheeks are also red, but from the cold, and his jowly face is covered with a thinly cultivated beard. He looks like the fat spirit of cheer that is summoned to homes on Christmas.

  “N-no,” I say again, in the face of his blind and selfish hope. I gesture as sharply toward the front door as I can. “L-l-leave.”

  He toes out of his boots and puts one socked foot on the lowest step, extending the wine toward me, cradled in two hands now as if it were a sacrificial offering or a white flag of peace. Neither of which I was willing to accept from the likes of him. “Come now, my boy—”

  “I am not your b-boy!” I hiss, keeping my voice low for the sake of our guests. The very last thing I want is for Martin or Mei Fan to come see what is wrong, for them to get sucked into Reed’s persistent delusion that I think of him as part of my own original family, or that I want him involved in my new one.

  If Pip’s parents come into Reed’s orbit, the sly old bastard will introduce himself as my father, and then I will be stuck. Worse still, they would probably bring Alis with them to the door, and I have done my utmost to keep Reed away from my daughter.

  Elgar Reed has ruined enough Turn lives. He will have no hand in Alis’s.

  I scan the crowd in the living room quickly, but no one seems to be paying us any mind for now. Good, we have not made enough of a mortifyingly obvious scene for that—yet. All the same, I wish Pip were here with me. While I am perhaps more elegant, the viciousness of her crasser vocabulary is to be admired, and she deploys it so very well.

  “Leave,” I say again, catching myself backing up the staircase, step for step at pace with Reed. I force myself to stop, to stand my ground. This is my house. I will not be chased into a corner like a mouse. “You are not w-welcome here, and I believe I have m-made that c-clear b-b-before.”

  “Forsyth!” Reed pleads. He stoops and leaves the wine on the step beside him when I do not release the banister to take it from his hands. “Please.”

  I cannot shove him back down the stairs and out the door, not bodily, not the way I wish. Not without attracting the attention of my guests, which would lead to having to lie to cover up Reed’s presence. In my time as Shadow Hand, I learned that it was best to avoid having to speak at all, rather than accumulating lies and having to recall them all later. But I also cannot let Reed into the living room, among our friends.

  Defeated, I turn my back to him and retreat up the stairs. Reed follows, just as I knew he would. His footfalls are heavy and deliberate behind me, and it feels like nothing so much as having an ill-wish riding my shadow.

  The door to my office, the first room on the landing, is open, and it is here I lead my maker. Though the master bedroom is furthest from my guests, and perhaps the better choice in terms of choosing somewhere where the argument that is inevitably about to ensue will be most muffled, I cannot bring myself to invite the man behind me into the most intimate place in my home. The place of greatest vulnerability in my life. And of course, I will never allow him into Alis’s nursery. That leaves only my office.

  Were I feeling polite, I would wait by the door for my guest to enter first. But I am not feeling polite, and Reed is not my guest. I walk into the room, picking up the scattered toys that Alis and I left on the floor and depositing them into the small playpen in the corner.

  Then I pace to the center of the room and turn to face him. Reed takes a tentative step over the threshold, as if, for the first time, he’s uncertain of his welcome. Uncertain in his belonging here, amid the detritus of my existence. He has always behaved as if he had a right to occupy the domestic spheres of my life, as if that which belonged to Syth Piper by default would also belong to Elgar Reed. As if my own wishes and my own right to privacy were moot.

  In my indignation, I nearly forget that the whole point of getting the lug upstairs was to keep our argument secret. I have an itching desire to cross the room again, shove him backward, and slam the door in his face.

  “Close th-the d-door,” I say, coldly, instead.

  Reed kicks the door shut behind him, and I can’t help the way my nose wrinkles at the uncivilized motion.

  “Your house is nice,” Reed offers into the following silence. His fingers fiddle with the edges of his coat, clearly uncertain if he should remove it or not, the gesture nervous and extremely telling. My maker would be either the worst or the best person with which to play poker, depending on how full one’s wallet was.

  “How did you f-f-find us?” I ask. “We m-moved.”

  “The university had Lucy’s address on file—”

  “You lied to her administrator?” I gasp, agog at both his boldness and his temerity to address my wife by her given name.

  “I told them I was a friend, that I needed the address for tonight.” He shrugs. “The receptionist is a fan, did you know?”

  “So you did lie!” I snarl, my stutter burned away in the heat of my anger.

  Reed’s smile quivers, even as it tries to widen. “Am I not your friend?”

  Unbelievable! I feel my hands curling into fists. I am no Kintyre, to throw punches or smash breakables when in a rage, but for the first time, I can see the appeal. If there were anything in my office that I did not value, I would surely be tossing it at Reed’s head right this moment. “No, you are not!”

  Reed blinks, surprise and hurt and denial chasing their way across his features. “Really now, Forsyth,” he cajoles. “Do you honestly want nothing to do with me, son?”

  “No!” I snap. “Not that! Absolutely n-n-not!”

  He steps forward, hands out and palm up, like a supplicant or a child trying to appease a snarling dog, too stupid to know that he should not approach. �
��But I—”

  “I had one fa-father, Elgar Reed,” I interrupt, standing my ground, refusing to let him back me into a corner, refusing to cringe. “And you know damn well what sort of an experience that was for me! I shan’t have another stepping in, especially not you.”

  Thankfully, Reed stops. He drops his arms and huffs a great sigh, as if I were the one testing his patience. “Forsyth, be reasonable. You’re the closest thing to a son that I’ll ever have.”

  “And of that I am quite glad! I cannot even begin to fathom what torments you might enact on a flesh-and-blood child!”

  “Now, that’s not fair,” Reed blusters, hauling as much of his impressive girth upright as he can and thrusting out his chest. “I wouldn’t hurt a real kid.”

  “But I do not qualify as ‘real.’” I snort. “You made the man who sired me beat me for daring to get between my mother and his drunk fists.”

  “You weren’t a person then—” he begins, hands once more raised in supplication, in defense, but I cut him off.

  “Enough!”

  He is startled into silence. He blinks at me with my father’s rheumy blue eyes, reddening around the rims, not from alcohol withdrawal, but from hurt. I take the respite to breathe deep, to rein my temper in, to remember that I was once the Shadow Hand of Hain, and I can keep my head. Eventually, I sigh and force my fists loose. I gesture dismissively, forcing myself to keep my gestures measured, gentle.

  “Enough,” I repeat, softly. “We have had this conversation before, and I won’t have it again. Now please, take yourself away, and do not return.”

  But Reed isn’t looking at me. He probably, as per usual when I request that he remain far away from my family, isn’t even listening. He is snooping around him. In the time I’ve taken to compose myself, he has moved over to my server bank and is staring at it with the same sort of horrified wonder that I had seen only once on Kintyre’s face: when he watched me murder Bootknife, my wife’s torturer.